e, you
see, I do it."

"Bravo, Bobby! I am delighted to hear that you ever do anything."

At the new voice, Bobby whirled around and bowed himself into a right
angle, while Beatrix rose and crossed the room to greet the guest.

"Miss Gannion! What joy to see you!"

Thayer's Russian blood received swift impressions; his Puritanism made
him weigh and measure with careful deliberation. Now, as he bowed in
acknowledgment of the introduction, he was conscious that in Margaret
Gannion he was meeting a woman who would bear either test. She seemed to
him one of the most strongly individual women he had ever met; yet at
the same time he had a comfortable sense of an infinite number of points
of mental contact. Later, he was destined to learn that this sense was
not imparted to himself alone. Margaret Gannion was tangent to many
lives.

"What is the discussion?" she inquired, as she seated herself.

"No discussion at all, Miss Gannion. Bobby is doing a monologue on
music, and the rest of us can't get a word in edgewise."

"Have you joined the ranks of the musicians, Bobby?"

"Yes, or the angels," Sally responded for him. "Nothing else could have
such a fatal facility for harping on one string."

"I was so sorry to lose your recital, Mr. Thayer," Miss Gannion said,
after a while, as she turned her steady brown eyes on the young man. "I
was in Boston, that week, and I am told that I missed one of the treats
of the season. When am I to have another chance of hearing you?"

Thayer hesitated for a moment, while his gray eyes met the brown ones
that seemed to be taking his mental measure. Apparently both were
satisfied with what they saw, for they exchanged a smile of sudden
understanding. Then Thayer's face grew grave.

"Whenever you wish," he replied quietly.

"Does that mean you will sing to me, myself? I should never have dared
hope for that."

"Why not? That is, if you will let me bring Arlt with me. I dislike to
force him upon people; but he is the only accompanist I really enjoy."

Beatrix looked up with a laugh.

"You never asked if you might bring him here, Mr. Thayer."

Suddenly he rose.

"May I take that as a hint, Miss Dane? I can play a few accompaniments
after a fashion." And, without waiting for the response which was sure
to come, he crossed the room to the piano.

He sang Schubert's _Haiden Roeslein_ and an American song or two. The
hush over the room deepened, as the last words fell on the stilln